The government of the Region indeed does evaluate Wallimage based on its structural impact on the Walloon audiovisual sector. However, the attached study clearly shows that for the past decade, Wallimage generated an economic fallout three times the money invested in coproductions. The mechanism then becomes budgetarily neutral for the public authorities, since every time Wallimage invests one million euro in a film, the production spends three in Wallonia, which generates at least 1 million euro in taxes for the government, directly or indirectly. Moreover, the statistics Wallimage assembles only represent the audiovisual expenses. Adding the return to the hotel and tourism sector, the percentage would rise to around 500% of the invested sums!
New however is the fact that beyond this economic fallout, Wallimage now also attracts films susceptible of generating revenue which repays the public investment directly.
A historical coincidence: on its anniversary week, no less than three Wallimage films are comfortably sitting at the top of the box-office in France and Belgium! Nothing to Declare has broken the barrier of 6 million tickets sold in France, while Jérôme Salle’s Largo Winch II is almost up to 900,000 tickets just in its first week. In Belgium, the same duo takes the top except that Rundskop/Tête de Boeuf, Michael Roskam’s bilingual film nestles between them on the second place.
We are very satisfied to share this news with you, obviously. We’d love nothing more than to share a few pictures of the past ten years too, in which we were at the service of the economic development of Wallonia’s cinema. As a nudge, we edited a “periodical magazine to appear every ten years” which we will send you upon simple request to our press service. As a reminder: you can also just look at it on the net.
